My Personal Journey through Medical School

Adjusting to Medical School

I’m not gonna lie, it’s been hard. And not just academically, but all the other aspects that no one likes to discuss are too. I didn’t really know what to expect once I actually started Medical School. I just knew that I was afraid. Is this something I really even want to do? Am I even capable of doing this? Was letting me in a mistake? I was a Psych major, so that fear stems from something called “The Impostor Syndrome” and believe me, it’s real…

I was the first person in my immediate family to go off to college for 4 years and that was a whole journey within it self. I had a difficult time adjusting my freshman year as well. I had similar thoughts of wondering if I would be “smart enough” to succeed in college. I can still remember all the fear that my high school teachers instilled in me that “College would be so much harder.” They said that the teacher would skip to the next slide before we even finished writing, that we would have to read all these long, difficult books, write 20 page essays every week and that our professors wouldn’t even notice or care if we made it to class. LOL, oh man. Looking back on that, the only thing that was true was the part about the professors not caring if you came to class. Lol, but everything else was definitely manageable. Nevertheless, I hated the school that I was at my freshman year, so I took a leap and decided to transfer colleges. Here I was again, a sophomore feeling like a freshman, and I had to readjust and relearn everything all over again. That was totally not in my original plans to transfer, but everything works out the way that it’s supposed to in the end.

Back to Medical School. Here I am again, in this adjusting phase. I’m in a completely new city, where I knew absolutely no one. A completely fresh slate. My first class was Anatomy, and boy was I in for a loop. Here I was, an A collegiate student, trying to figure out how to even study for Anatomy. I still to this day don’t remember how I studied in college, lol all I literally ever did was go to class and read my notes, over and over again. That’s literally it. (Not completely it, but for 75% of it) And the A’s just piled up one on top of the other. And I had so much spare time, I could hang out with friends, go party on the weekend, watch a whole Netflix series, I had a job, and still made it to church on Sunday. That seems like a dream right now, a far fetched dream. I can’t believe I took all that for granted. So, here I was in my first class of medical school literally crying because I didn’t know how to study this massive amount of information. It was a honestly a shot to my pride. And those feelings of doubt started to seep in, one by one..

Aside from the few doctors that I shadowed or briefly encountered in college, I had no real clue of what med school would actually be like. It’s been hard. I never really had many Pre-Med friends in college, omg I thought they were so annoying.They were so anal about everything: joining clubs I didn’t even know existed, their brothers best friend’s sister was a doctor and they’ve been shadowing her since 6th grade… Yeah, no. It just felt like everything to them was a competition. That is not my personality at all and I don’t mesh well with those type of people, they stress me out. Lol so imagine the shock once I start school, and these people are becoming my friends. Till the day that I die, I have to stay true to myself and I am a self-proclaimed relaxed easy going hippie at heart.

A recent story, last week I had just finished up with my first class and we quickly started the next one that following Monday. One night, I was studying, studying and then out of nowhere I just had a huge breakdown. We hadn’t got our final grades back yet from the first class and here I was studying for the new one. I was so anxious because I was worried if I even performed well in that class and if I needed to reevaluate my life for my new one. Our grades eventually came a week later, and my nerves were finally eased, but these feelings were real. At first, I felt kind of ashamed to be feeling this way about having a difficult time adjusting to medical school, feelings of inadequacy, etc. But no, no, no. My feelings are valid and I am not ashamed nor do I feel the need to hide them. I’m only human. I don’t have everything figured out and I never will. I’m sure other graduate level programs are like this too, but some medical students are literally the most prideful people you will ever meet in your life. It feels like everyone has on a pokerface. Sometimes, I just feel like I’m surrounded by these auto programmed robots that just act like they have everything together, showing absolutely no signs of “weakness.” I’m not one for the false pretenses though, lol I feel like the curly fry in the box of regular. And I guess it’s difficult for me because I usually separate my work life from my social life, but here in medical school, they are literally the bulk of the people that I interact with on a daily basis so it’s frustrating at times.

The moral of the story is adjusting sucks. I had to adjust to college my freshman year, I had to readjust all over again when I transferred schools my sophomore year. But I ended up not only succeeding, but thriving actually. So that is my motivation to push through right now. I’ve overcome before and I shall overcome again and again.. Sometimes you just need to remind yourself of how much of a badass you truly are. I am destined for greatness and right now, I’m just getting my feet wet. But I’ve cried, I’ve prayed, I’ve meditated myself out of tantrums and breakdowns. Everything is gonna be okay. I hope this post inspires you readers to push through and overcome as well. We got this. If God brought you to it, he’ll bring you through it.

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One thought on “Adjusting to Medical School”

Thanks for the post! Love your blog. I totally agree with you. Sometimes I’m afraid to tell people I am “pre-med” because of the bad reputation we get. I am in my senior year of undergrad and am so ready to go to med school but its sad to see that there is still a hostile atmosphere in med school.

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About Pretty Girl Practice

Created by Cree Clay, Pretty Girl Practice serves as a resource to women seeking careers in a healthcare related field. I am currently a 2nd year medical student and I will reflect on the path that I took to get here and also document my upcoming journey throughout medical school. I hope that you find this blog to be useful!